Many scholars and other observers of developments in Internet governance, law, and policy have commented upon an unusual and important phenomenon that has become more widespread in recent years: using control over access to critical portions of the Internet’s technical infrastructure […]

Today, IP Justice submitted comments, together with ICANN’s Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG), the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), and several other organizations and individuals concerned about ICANN’s proposal to restrict access to privacy protections for domain name registrations.

IP Justice opposes this illegitimate attempt to circumvent proper policy development process in the creation and imposition of a new gTLD policy. In addition to the inappropriate process utilized, the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) policy will chill freedom of expression as domain names will be quickly suspended […]

A group of twenty-four civil society organizations and individuals today submitted a joint statement regarding a proposal from an ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) sub-group on the use of geographic names in top-level domains. The joint civil society statement cautioned against the adoption of the GAC proposal that would give governments veto power on domains that use geographic names. The submission stated that the proposal would threaten to chill freedom of expression and other lawful rights to use words in domain names, stifle innovation, and undermine the multi-stakeholder model for Internet governance. The group also stated that the proposal is based on flawed presumptions of law and 'the public interest' and is entirely unworkable from a practical standpoint.

NCSG Position on ICANN Board-Staff Violation of Corporate Bylaws by Imposing “TM+50 Policy” on GNSO
7 November 2013

Available as .pdf

At the request of ICANN legal staff as per its Cooperative Engagement Process (CEP), the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG) provides this further explanation of our complaint regarding the ICANN Board-staff’s violation of the Corporate Bylaws in its […]

ICANN's Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG) has filed a Request for Reconsideration with ICANN's Board of Directors regarding the staff's decision to expand the scope of the trademark claims service beyond that provided by community consensus policy and in contradiction to ICANN Bylaws.

At ICANNâ€™s 45th international meeting in Toronto in October 2012, ICANNâ€™s Intellectual Property and Business Constituencies sent a letter to ICANN to request that additional changes be made to the policies for new top-level domain names. Despite the fact that the current policy had been long finalized via a painstakingly arduous consensus process in which all stakeholders compromised and ultimately reached unanimous agreement, nonetheless the IPC and BC sent a letter to Fadi Chehade, the new CEO, and the ICANN Board of Directors with 8-points for consideration and policy modification. Many of these points were the same requests the intellectual property/ business community has made before. Unfortunately, the key aspects of most of the 8-points sought to re-open previously closed agreements. Further, most of the points proposed policy changes, rather than merely clarifying technical implementation details.

ICANN organized a meeting on 15-16 November 2012 in Los Angeles, the Trademark Clearinghouse policy negotiations, to consider the 8-point policy requests sent by the Intellectual Property and Business Constituencies to the ICANN board and senior staff at the October 2012 Toronto ICANN meeting. I participated in the LA policy meeting on behalf of noncommercial users and below is my personal evaluation of the meeting and initial reactions to the output of the meeting...

* NCSG is concerned by proposals from the IPC and BC to change consensus policy and re-open previously settled policy matters on Rights Protection Mechanisms for new tlds.
* The proposal under discussion does not reflect the hard-won balance found in the current consensus policy, nor the traditional limitations that exist in trademark law.
* The proposal removes matters from the negotiated RAA and registry agreements into a vague 'backdoor process', and binds ICANN to unlimited compliance obligations.
* Both the substance of the proposals and the manner of presenting it directly to ICANN without a proper policy process undermine our shared desire to create a truly multi-equal stakeholder process that honours ICANN's commitment to transparency and accountability.